Re: Richard Rorty and social security

[Doug Henwood]

I guess I sort of split the difference with Lou & Max on this. It's 
nice, as Max said, to see someone talking about inequality on the 
op-ed page of the NYT; it's virtually disappeared as a political 
issue (probably because liberals were happy to condemn it when they 
could blame it on Reagan and Bush, but they don't want to dis the Dem 
at 1600 now, even though the gini has risen under Clinton). But 
Rorty's argument is a spurious redistributionism that give aid and 
comfort to the means testers. It's like the taxation of Social 
Security benefits - it sounds nice, but it's right up Pete Peterson's 
alley, lubrication for turning SS into a welfare program. There are 
very few geezers with $100k+ incomes, so Rorty's scheme would have 
little economic effect. But the political effect would be pretty bad.

Doug